We describe a method for reducing the complexity of temporal logic model checking in systems composed of many parallel processes. The goal is to check properties of the components of a system and then deduce global properties from these local properties. The main difficulty with this type of approach is that local properties are often not preserved at the global level. We present a general framework for using additional interface processes to model the environment for a component. These interface processes are typically much simpler than the full environment of the component. By composing a component with its interface processes and then checking properties of this composition, we can guarantee that these properties will be preserved at the global level. We give two example compositional systems based on the logic CTL*.

This paper discusses the theoretical concepts underlying a project at Rice University to develop an automatic translator, called PFC (for Parallel FORTRAN Converter), from FORTRAN to FORTRAN 8x. The Rice project, based initially upon the research of Kuck and others at the University of Illinois [6, 17-21, 24, 32, 36], is a continuation of work begun while on leave at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Our first implementation was based on the Illinois PARAFRASE compiler [20, 36], but the current version is a completely new program (although it performs many of the same transformations as PARAFRASE). Other projects that have influenced our work are the Texas Instruments ASC compiler [9, 33], the Cray-1 FORTRAN compiler [15], and the Massachusetts Computer Associates Vectorizer [22, 25]. The paper is organized into seven sections. Section 2 introduces FORTRAN 8x and gives examples of its use. Section 3 presents an overview of the translation process along with an extended translation example. Section 4 develops the concept of interstatement dependence and shows how it can be applied to the problem of vectorization. Loop carried dependence and loop independent dependence are introduced in this section to extend dependence to multiple statements and multiple loops. Section 5 develops dependence-based algorithms for code generation and transformations for enhancing the parallelism of a statement. Section 6 describes a method for extending the power of data dependence to control statements by the process of IF conversion. Finally, Section 7 details the current state of PFC and our plans for its continued development

Translating linear temporal logic formulas to automata has proven to be an effective approach for implementing linear-time model-checking, and for obtaining many extensions and improvements to this verification method. On the other hand, for branching temporal logic, automata-theoretic techniques have long been thought to introduce an exponential penalty, making them essentially useless for model-checking. Recently, Bernholtz and Grumberg have shown that this exponential penalty can be avoided, though they did not match the linear complexity of non-automata-theoretic algorithms. In this paper we show that alternating tree automata are the key to a comprehensive automata-theoretic framework for branching temporal logics. Not only, as was shown by Muller et al., can they be used to obtain optimal decision procedures, but, as we show here, they also make it possible to derive optimal model-checking algorithms. Moreover, the simple combinatorial structure that emerges from the a...

Real-time control of three-dimensional avatars is an important problem in the context of computer games and virtual environments. Avatar animation and control is difficult, however, because a large repertoire of avatar behaviors must be made available, and the user must be able to select from this set of behaviors, possibly with a low-dimensional input device. One appealing approach to obtaining a rich set of avatar behaviors is to collect an extended, unlabeled sequence of motion data appropriate to the application. In this paper, we show that such a motion database can be preprocessed for flexibility in behavior and efficient search and exploited for real-time avatar control. Flexibility is created by identifying plausible transitions between motion segments, and efficient search through the resulting graph structure is obtained through clustering. Three interface techniques are demonstrated for controlling avatar motion using this data structure: the user selects from a set of available choices, sketches a path through an environment, or acts out a desired motion in front of a video camera. We demonstrate the flexibility of the approach through four different applications and compare the avatar motion to directly recorded human motion.

We describe a four-pass algorithm for drawing directed graphs. The first pass finds an optimal rank assignment using a network simplex algorithm. The second pass sets the vertex order within ranks by an iterative heuristic incorporating a novel weight function and local transpositions to reduce crossings. The third pass finds optimal coordinates for nodes by constructing and ranking an auxiliary graph. The fourth pass makes splines to draw edges. The algorithm makes good drawings and runs fast. 1.

The problem of dimensionality reduction arises in many fields of information processing, including machine learning, data compression, scientific visualization, pattern recognition, and neural computation.

Internet search engines have popularized the keywordbased search paradigm. While traditional database management systems offer powerful query languages, they do not allow keyword-based search. In this paper, we discuss DBXplorer, a system that enables keywordbased search in relational databases. DBXplorer has been implemented using a commercial relational database and web server and allows users to interact via a browser front-end. We outline the challenges and discuss the implementation of our system including results of extensive experimental evaluation. 1.

We propose a new translation from normal logic programs with constraints under the answer set semantics to propositional logic. Given a normal logic program, we show that by adding, for each loop in the program, a corresponding loop formula to the program’s completion, we obtain a one-to-one correspondence between the answer sets of the program and the models of the resulting propositional theory. In the worst case, there may be an exponential number of loops in a logic program. To address this problem, we propose an approach that adds loop formulas a few at a time, selectively. Based on these results, we implement a system called ASSAT(X), depending on the SAT solver X used, for computing one answer set of a normal logic program with constraints. We test the system on a variety of benchmarks including the graph coloring, the blocks world planning, and Hamiltonian Circuit domains. Our experimental results show that in these domains, for the task of generating one answer set of a normal logic program, our system has a clear edge over the state-of-art answer set programming systems Smodels and DLV. 1 1

A sequence of interleaved user transactions in a database system may not be 8zis, i.e., equivalent to some sequential execution of the individual transactions. Using a simle transaction model we show that recognizing the transaction histories which are serializable is an NP- complete problem. We therefore introduce several efficiently recognizable j9gsses of the class of serializable histories most of thee S.b- classes correspond to serializability principles existing in the literature and used in practice. We also propose two new principles which subsume all previously known ones. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a class of histories to be the output of an efficient history scheduler these conditions imply that there can be no efficient scheduler that outputs all of serializable histories,.and also that all subclasses of serializable histories studied above have an efficient scheduler. Finally, we show how our results can be extended to far more general transaction models,'to transactions with partly interpreted functions, and to distributed database syst%.

In this paper we study the properties of the class of head-cycle-free extended disjunctive logic programs (HEDLPs), which includes, as a special case, all nondisjunctive extended logic programs. We show that any propositional HEDLP can be mapped in polynomial time into a propositional theory such that each model of the latter corresponds to an answer set, as defined by stable model semantics, of the former. Using this mapping, we show that many queries over HEDLPs can be determined by solving propositional satisfiability problems. Our mapping has several important implications: It establishes the NP-completeness of this class of disjunctive logic programs; it allows existing algorithms and tractable subsets for the satisfiability problem to be used in logic programming; it facilitates evaluation of the expressive power of disjunctive logic programs; and it leads to the discovery of useful similarities between stable model semantics and Clark's predicate completion. 1 Introduction ...